Education

Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2017

M.A., Western Carolina University, 2012

B.S., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003

Research

Luke Manget's research focuses on how the interaction between nature and culture has
shaped the history of the American South, specifically the southern Appalachian Mountains.
His dissertation examines the rise and decline of the botanical drug trade in the
southern mountains. It illustrates how Appalachia's biodiversity, the commons culture
of its residents, and the entrepreneurial imagination of its merchants turned the
region into the epicenter for the trade in medicinal plants indigenous to North America.
This particular interaction of markets, local culture, and ecology channeled environmental
and cultural change in different directions. Luke's scholarship has been published
in Environmental History, Appalachian Journal, and Ohio Valley History. His current project examines the evolution of common rights in the southern countryside,
how they shaped class, race, and gender relations, and how and why they were curtailed
and renegotiated in the post-Civil-War era.

Graduate Research Award, Willson Center, University of Georgia, 2015-2016

Archie K. Davis Fellowship, North Caroliniana Society, 2014

Publication Highlights

“Ginseng, China, and the Transformation of the Ohio Valley, 1783-1840," Ohio Valley History (forthcoming, fall 2017).

“Community and the Commons: Fence Laws, Land, and Identity in Postbellum Appalachia,"
in Steven E. Nash and Bruce Stewart, eds., Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the Nineteenth-Century American
South (forthcoming, spring 2018).

“Nature's Emporium: The Botanical Drug Trade and the Commons Tradition in Southern
Appalachia," Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and
Science, University of Colorado-Boulder, October 2-4, 2015.

“Hugh MacRae and the Idea of Farm City: Race, Class, and Conservation in the New South,
1905-1934," Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, Converse
College, Spartanburg, SC. April 2013.